Trust me on this, weve looked at more tape than 3M ships out in a week. Ive spent more time thinking about, and making phone calls on, this one incident than any story I can remember in my nine years at TGC. And Im hardly alone among those whove dedicated their working life over the past few days to figuring this thing out. (The beauty of this job, by the way.)
You know what Ive concluded? Not much, to tell you the truth, except that I think the list of those to question runs pretty deep.
Whatever your feeling is about the outcome -- the ruling and the players in the storyline that Sunday will not soon be forgotten -- I think it bears mentioning with strong emphasis that each of the characters in the plot gave us their time.
Cink politely declined a live chat on 'Golf Central' and the 'Sprint Pre Game,' but did return my phone calls and did spend time with me talking about it on two separate occasions, giving me his side of the story for use on the shows.
Slugger White talked with us on 'Golf Central' Monday night, returned my call again on Tuesday and agreed (with Jon Brendle) to put an appearance on the 'Sprint Pre Game' ahead of his sons baseball practice and his family in general.
Ted Purdy hardly hid from our phone calls and seemed to give viewers the same line of discord that he gave to our Jerry Foltz on the telephone. Trust us, hes mad.
I dont know what becomes of the situation from here. But I hope you can appreciate their respect for the issue and their respect for how passionate we, as fellow fraternity members of the sport, are about these situations as they arise in front of our very eyes.
I do know this: Im a member at Windermere Country Club here in the Orlando, Fla. area. And weve got a few waste areas that Ive found myself in before. And the next time Im there, or anybody is for that matter, people will be talking about the shot Ill play, how Ill prepare to play it, questioning the result if they didnt watch my shot, and also throwing the name Cink into the conversation. It just cant be helped.
I do hope we can get things back to normal in a hurry, though. Im suddenly missing all the e-mails and discussion about whats wrong with Tiger, why the media fawns all over Tiger and why were also all now so quick to fall in love with Phil.
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